books

Silver lining: ‘Red Queen’ reveals book cover

July 02, 2014

‘Red Queen’ by Victoria Aveyard. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, July 2, 2014.The first entry in Victoria Aveyard's upcoming young adult trilogy wears its colours on its sleeve: silver for the book's elite rulers, red for the revolutionary rabble.

Viewed from one angle, it's a twist on the "X-Men" narrative – that super powered mutants are viewed as dangerous outcasts – except in Aveyard's fiction, those in possession of such powers are better positioned to lead their nations.

But threatening to upset the status quo is the emergence of a peasant girl who suddenly flourishes super powers of her own and is quickly subsumed into the royal line, despite her secret commitment to the revolution.

With "Red Queen" finished and scheduled for publication in February 2015, having been optioned for film by Universal in May 2013, and Aveyard's script for Greek mythological tale "Eternal" now in the hands of Sony Pictures and "Divergent" producer Pouya Shabazian, the young author spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her influences and plans.

She wrote "Red Queen" in response to a period spent interning at a movie studio, where one of her jobs was to scrape Amazon's self-published fiction section for titles with crossover potential, and she realised just how much demand there was for material.

Having moved back to Massachusetts to crank out "Red Queen" within a year of graduating with an MFA from the University of Southern California, where she'd pitched her idea to reps from production co Benderspink, she celebrated her book and movie deals by moving back to Los Angeles.

"I moved to LA and got [a Mercedes]," she said. "That was my splurge. And I got a desk. I didn't have a desk to write 'Red Queen' on." – AFP/Relaxnews, July 2, 2014.